Logan Huntzberger had the perfect life until his fiancée walked out on him. When she suddenly reenters his life again, Logan and his best friend, Rory, come up with a brilliant plan. But, when the plan works better than they ever could imagine, it could mean more than they all bargained for.

OoOoOoOoOoO

"Hey, Logan, you coming?" Brian called from his seat on the couch. "They just kicked off."

Logan grabbed the popcorn and Cool Ranch Doritos from the cabinet and headed for the living room. "How awesome is this? Beer, football, and all the popcorn you could possibly eat in one room."

"It's perfect." Brian reached for some popcorn as the little men ran around the screen. "Throw it! Throw it! Oh, my God." He sat back on the yellow couch in agony. "The Broncos have got to get a new quarterback or they'll never return to the Elway glory days."

"If he could just run a little bit, it would help." Logan grabbed a handful of chips and shook his head. "You can't just drop back and stand there. You'll get killed every time."

The next play started on the television.

"Go! Throw it! Throw it! Look at him, he's wide open! Yes!" Frantically Brian jumped to his feet as the pass on the screen sailed over the intended receiver. "Ahh, man! You've got to be kidding me. Oh, it's going to be a long year."

OoOoOoOo

"He likes the Broncos," Logan said, happily slapping the side of Rory's cubicle wall Tuesday morning.

"The Broncos?" she asked, looking up in confusion. "He likes the rodeo?"

"No, the Denver Broncos ding-dong."

Instantly her face fell in revulsion, "Ugh, like that's any better. Is he crazy or something?"

"Hey." Logan narrowed his eyes at her. "That's my team you're talking about."

"Oh, yeah," she said sympathetically. "I forgot you're mentally unstable too."

"Ouch, two in a row." He took a step back as though he'd just been fatally wounded. Then he stepped forward and leveled an index finger at her. "You know, if you keep this up, I'm going to stop coming by."

"If God would be so kind."

"Yep, I'm going to just leave, and you're going to miss me. You'll see."

"Miss you?" she asked, refocusing her attention on her desk. "I think I'll break out into a rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus."

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't be so sure about that."

"Huntzberger," Elliot, the paunch, gray-headed supervisor called from behind him, and Logan turned just as a stack of computer printouts landed in his hands. "Cindy's out sick. These are her notes for her article; I need it done before you leave tonight."

Logan's eyes closed in instant frustration as the supervisor kept walking down the hallway. With a sigh, he looked back at her. "I'd better get to work."

"Yeah," she said sympathetically. "Good luck."

He bobbed his head and started back to his desk.

"I hope you have better luck than the Broncos did last night," she called, and he smiled in spite of her barb.

OoOoOoOoOo

"So, Logan, you never told me what it is you do exactly," Brian said the following night as they sat over plates of Hamburger Helper Cheesy Enchilada.

"I'm a journalist for the Hartford Courant," Logan replied disdainfully.

"Not your first choice, I take it."

"Umm, no, more like 53rd. Long story, but it pays the bills." He pushed a piece of hamburger around his plate. "How about you? What do you do?"

"I design," Brian said.

"Design? Like what, houses!"

"No, landscapes."

"Oh, you're a landscaper."

"Landscape design artist," Brian corrected forcefully, and then he shrugged. "That's what I want to do anyway. Right now I'm the assistant to the assistant."

"What does that entail?" Logan asked although he wasn't sure he really wanted to know.

"Carrying shovels around for my Uncle Jack."

"Ahh, Uncle Jack, and he's a landscaper."

"Yeah." Brian took a long drink. "Landscaping in Denver was this side of pointless. All I did was shovel snow."

"Which, I take it, is worse than carrying shovels."

"It's not bad once or twice a year, but seven months a year is a little much."

" So, is this something you've gone to school for?" Logan asked, gaining interest in the topic.

"Carrying shovels?" Brian asked, and then he realized what Logan meant. "Oh, design. Yeah, I took some classes at the community college in Denver. Technically I have an associate's degree."

"Technically?"

"I was three hours short from finishing when Uncle Jack offered me a job." Brian shrugged. "I hate Denver anyway, and I really didn't see the point of staying, so here I am."

Logan nodded. "Okay, so, what do you landscape exactly?"

"Uncle Jack has his own company. He mostly does malls and offices. Things like that."

"He designs them?"

"No, he contracts to do the actual work – the mowing, the weeding – that stuff."

" So you weed gardens?"

Brian wrinkled his nose at the statement. "Yeah, but just until I can get someone to see my designs."

"What designs?"

"Parks, backyards, some office buildings, but mostly residential stuff."

"And your designs are…in your head?"

"Oh, no. I've got a whole portfolio of them, planned out to the last begonia."

Logan raised his eyebrows skeptically.

"You want to see them?" Brian asked to the disbelieving face across the table.

"Sure."

Brian stood to take his dishes to the sink.

"I'll get these." Logan stood and picked up his own plate. It was nice to have a conversation over dinner with someone other than the TV.

He had just wiped off the kitchen table when he noticed Brian laying papers on the table. Quickly he wiped his hands on the towel and went to rejoin Brian at the table. A myriad of drawings were spread out across the oak table.

Carefully Logan picked one up, examined it as Brian folded his arms, and watched for Logan's reaction.

"This is a design?" Logan asked, squinting to read the tiny letters in all the shapes across the page.

"Yeah, it's a park."

Logan nodded although he couldn't quite figure out what he was looking at.

"That's the basic layout, and then I've got this one that shows the elevation," Brian reached down and handed a second page to Logan who took a step back in surprise.

"Whoa. That's nice."

The elevation drawing was done on a regular piece of paper, but that was the only thing that was regular about it. It had trees spread across it with patches of flowers and a sidewalk that naked through it. But something about it was inviting – like it wrapped around you.

"You drew this?" Logan asked genuinely impressed.

"Yeah, I did that one before I took any classes. It's really rough."

"It looks good to me."

"I've got some other stuff up in the room. Scale models I did for class – that sort of thing."

Logan looked back at the table and picked another drawing up. "And this one?"

"That's one I did for the daycare center down the road from my house in Denver, but they only did the play equipment, the plants would've taking too much maintenance."

"So, you set this one up?"

Slowly Brian shook his head as his gaze dropped back to the table. "They did."

"Who's they?" Logan asked as Brian began gathering the drawings together.

"My boss," Brian said with barely concealed anger.

"They used your idea?"

"Yeah without using me," Brian said heatedly. "They gave my idea to their design artist, and he did the final layout."

"I don't understand," Logan said as his forehead furrowed in confusion.

"Join the club." Brian stuffed all the drawings back in his folder and looked at the clock. "I think I'm going to call it a night. I've got to be at work at six tomorrow."

"Yeah, okay." Logan handed the drawing back to Brian and watched him go.

It was strange. On the outside, they looked as different as daylight and darkness – Logan in his flawless business attire complete with coordinating tie and perfectly pressed shirt and pants, Brian in worn jeans and a t-shirt that had obviously seen its share of dirt and grime. Yet, they were both in jobs they hated, hoping to work their way up the proverbial ladder. With a shake of his head, Logan snapped off the lights and followed Brian up the stairs. He too had a date tomorrow with a boss and a job he couldn't stand.

OoOoOoOoOoO

"I think I'm going to quit," Logan said the next day as he sat across the desk from Rory.

"Quit?" she asked in immediate concern. "Why?"

"Don't you ever get tired of writing article after article? We write about the same thing day after day."

She leaned back in her chair and surveyed him with a worried look. "No."

"Well, I do. This isn't what I wanted to do; it's what my parents wanted to me to do. I didn't beat my head against a wall at Yale for four years so I could sit in some cubicle at a computer screen with the nearest window five rooms over."

Her forehead furrowed in puzzled consternation. "Where's this coming from?"

"Nowhere," he said, shaking his head with a sad, pathetic laugh. "Forget I mentioned it." And with that he stood and walked out.

OoOoOoOoOoO

Two hours later he walked back into her cubicle with a stack of paper in his hands.

"Elliot wants these sorted and organized by four," he said, dumping them on her desk.

"By four?" she asked, looking up in surprise at both his appearance and his tone. "But I'm working on the construction article."

"Don't you know, you're supposed to prioritize," he said sarcastically with his face set like stone. "Weren't you listening at the last meeting?"

"Logan, can we talk about this?" she asked, fighting to breathe through the fear filling her lungs.

"About what?" he asked at her door, and she saw his jaw set.

"About your quitting," she said, stumbling through the minefield in his eyes. "And about why you're mad at the world."

"I'm not mad at the world." His jaw locked tighter in defense, "I'm mad at myself."

"Why?" she asked softly.

"Oh, come on, Ace, even you can't be that blind." He held his hands out from his sides. "Look at me, I'm 29 years old, and what have I done with my life. Huh? I've got an ex-fiancée on top of a whole string of meaningless relationships before her. I'm in a job I despise in a career I hate. I come to work everyday, stay late every night working myself to death for what? A ten-cent pay raise?" He shook his head in frustration. "God, I've got to get out of here."

She knew what she wanted to say, but at the last moment the courage to say it escaped from her.

"Elliot wants that stuff on his desk by four," Logan said, pointing to the stack with that depressed, angry tone, and she looked down at the stack. "I've got work to do."

When she looked up again, he was gone.

Logan leaving? She tried to breathe. He'd joked about it for years, but this time he wasn't joking, she could feel it in her gut. She had to have known this would come eventually, afterall the newspaper business wasn't his choice. Her gaze fell from the doorway to the stack of papers as snapshots from the last four years ran through her head. Their first meeting, buying the couch for his apartment, eating lunch together. Coffee and donuts in the morning. A couple quick sandwiches in the afternoon down in the atrium. Chicken salad, that was his favorite.

Her heart ached as the thought of his touch ran through her mind. He would never care about her the way she cared about him, but she could live with that. As long as he was here, right next door, stopping in to see her every day, she could handle not being with him. But him leaving for good? That was another story. She couldn't imagine someone else in the next cubicle. Not hearing his voice when his phone rang. Not looking up and seeing him with his hand on her wall, leaning in, asking her something meaningless.

But all that meaninglessness had come to mean so much in her small world, for when she went home to her empty apartment, the meaninglessness that he had shared with her during the day was all that she had to hold onto at night. If he left, she wouldn't even have meaninglessness left.

As pain screeched through her heart, she laid her head down on the stack of papers and let it take her.

OoOoOoOooOoO

"You have no idea how many trees I planted today," Brian said as he dropped to the couch and covered his eyes with his wrist.

"20?" Logan offered, sitting down in the chair and clicking on the TV.

"352," Brian said without picking his head off the couch.

"For who?"

"The nursing home they're putting up north of town. Trees, trees, and more trees. That's all I see every time I close my eyes. And not one of them had more than a few minutes of thought behind it. 'Yeah, Brian, I think we need another one over here,'" he said, imitating someone Logan could only guess was supposed to be Uncle Jack.

"They put one four feet from a sidewalk," Brian continued. "Four feet. An elm tree at that. A Chinese Elm."

"And that's bad?" Logan asked, not having a clue as to why Brian sounded like the world was ending.

"Umm, yeah," Brian said sarcastically. "In two years they'll be digging that thing back up and replacing the sidewalk."

"Why?"

"Roots," Brian said simply. "You've got to design with the root system in mind – not just whatever's cheapest. I bet that cheap elm tree ends up costing them six times what they paid for it."

"Well, why didn't you tell somebody?"

"Ha!" Brian said spitefully. "They know what they're doing. They don't want to hear ideas form some little hired hand."

Logan wanted to argue, but his thoughts slammed into his own office, and he knew exactly the trap Brian was in.

"So, if this isn't what you want to do, you must have some reason for doing it."

"Connections," Brian said, sitting up and leaning his elbows on his knees to drink from his tea sitting on the coffee table. "It's all about connections."

"What kind of connections?"

"The kind you make while you're on the job. The kind that'll eventually start contacting me directly instead of going through Uncle Jack."

"And then what?" Logan asked completely taken by Brian's absolute understanding of where he was going and how he was getting there.

"And then, I start my own company. I hire my own crew, and I transform this city one backyard at a time."

"Huh. So you've got it all figured out then?" Logan asked as a hard ball formed in the pit of his stomach. "Your whole life mapped out in front of you."

"Pretty much." Brian set the glass down and leaned back into the couch. "I just wish it could happen a little faster, you know? But there's such a thing as paying your dues, too. That can't be discounted. Believe me, I'll be much more sympathetic with the guys on my crews because I've been out there myself."

"Setting elm trees."

Brian nodded. "In the wrong places."

OoOoOoOoOoO

"You want to go to lunch?" Logan asked on Friday, and Rory's heart took its familiar trip skyward.

He hadn't stopped his trips to her cubicle – yet.

"Sure," she said thankful for one more afternoon with him.

Once they had their sandwiches, they walked down to the atrium and found a spot on a bench surrounded by trees. After unwrapping his chicken salad sandwich, Logan leaned back and looked up at the trees with a laugh.

"What?" She asked, liking how his profile looked in the sunlight playing through the treetops.

"Just something Brian said the other night," he said, and then his smile faded. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Do you think it's a bad thing if you don't have a map of your life worked out ahead of time?"

"A map?"

"Yeah, like exactly where you're going?"

"I don't know," she said, turning away from his profile. "I suppose sometimes it's nice just to let things happen."

"Yeah." He took a bite of sandwich and a deep breath. "You know I look down the road to where I'm heading, and I can't really see anything – nothing solid. Nothing that I really want to go for. Nothing I'd give everything to get." He took another bite. "I feel like I'm wasting my time, but then I think well, what else would I be doing, and I can't come up with an answer to that question."

The feelings behind his words pulled her to him like a magnet until he turned to her and smiled, a move which sent her quickly back to her side of the bench.

"I bet you don't have a clued what I'm talking about," he said with a shake of his head.

"No, I do. I went to Yale set on journalism but dropped out after my sophomore year. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I spent that time fighting with my mom and eventually went back. Then I went straight to work after I graduated even though I still didn't know exactly where I wanted to start."

She felt his gaze travel down her face, and she flushed at the thought that in the last four years, she had found a dream she wanted to pursue, and it was sitting right next to her. Quickly she finished her sandwich and crumpled up the wrapper.

"So, now you know where you're going?" he asked, his gaze following her up off the bench.

"Kinda, but not really," she said with a smile. "But I figure if I just keep walking, sooner or later I'll either get to where I'm going or I'll get somewhere else. Either way I'll know where I was headed."

In one crunch, he threw his wrapper in the trash and dusted his charcoal pants off before following her into the elevators. Unconsciously he smoothed his burgundy tie down over his gray shirt. "And that doesn't bother you?"

"What?" she asked, having seen every move he'd made without really watching him. She knew them all by heart.

"To 'keep walking'? Not having a definite destination in mind."

She shrugged. "Not much I can do about it, so why worry?" With a shove, she pushed him through the door and punched the button to the elevator. "Why, what's your burning dream? What are you so interested in chasing?"

Slowly his gaze dropped to his loafers as one hand found his pocket. Then at the next thought he looked right at her. "Not this."